British Idealism was a philosophical movement of the late 19th and early 20th
century, based in England, Scotland, and Wales. Its 'home' was in Oxford--Oxford, more
than Cambridge and London--in Glasgow and St Andrews--more than Edinburgh and
Aberdeen--and in Cardiff.

Its principal representatives are T.H. Green, Edward Caird, F.H. Bradley, and
Bernard Bosanquet, and others (such as Henry Jones, R.B. Haldane, David Ritchie, JME
McTaggart and, in later years, R.G. Collingwood and Geoffrey Mure), but its influence
was felt far beyond the universities. Students of Green and Caird went on, after their
studies, to be active in public life (e.g., in the University Settlement houses--something
like the 'base communities' in Latin America or worker priest movement in France--and
in the Charity Organisation Society, which administered the British government's Poor
Law in the late 19th century) And the philosophers themselves were active as well. Green
was an assistant commissioner on the royal schools enquiry commission 1865-6, served
on the oxford school board and the oxford town council; Caird was similarly active in
local politics in Glasgow; Haldane was a member of Parliament from 1885, and served as
Secretary of State for War [1905-1912] and Lord Chancellor [1912- 1915; 1924] ; Henry
Jones was called on by the parliamentary recruitment committee in late 1915 to undertake
a number of public meetings throughout wales to defend the asquith government and
encourage recruitment into the armed forces [boucher and vincent, 9]___; Bosanquet was
a long time chair and advisor to the COS and active in adult education and university
extension schemes-- and the list can go on

(It attracted the respectable middle class, rather than the elites, and tended to be
_____.)

Given where the movement originated, it is obvious why these men and women
were called British idealists; it is worth emphasizing, however, that, while many studied
at Oxford and fell under the influence of Green, most of these men came from Scotland
or Wales or the north of England. This reflects something of the intellectual culture, but
also the way in which many of these figures thought of the relation of the individual to
the community.

What does it mean to say they were idealists?

The British Idealists were opposed to (then) contemporary empiricism and
materialism--represented by Bentham, Mill and Bain. This empiricism and materialism
held that reality was fundamentally material, that all states and processes (including all
thought--i.e., mental states and processes) were reducible to the material, the observable,
and the testable, that all knowledge (including our concepts) comes from experience of
material reality--and that therefore moral and aesthetic and (so-called) religious
experience were all products of this as well.

Idealists rejected all of this. For example, the Idealists held the view that social
relations and institutions were not ultimately material phenomena, but best understood as
existing at the level of human consciousness. More generally, they held the metaphysical
view that reality itself is 'mental' and that only mind (or Mind) and its contents are real.
But while they asserted that mind in some way 'makes' nature, they denied the view that
reality was simply a product of human minds or perceptions, that reality was structured
by (or simply the sum of the perceptions of) human consciousness, and that we could not
say that things exist independent of human consciousness. (The two latter views should,
rather, be attributed to 'subjective idealists' such as Berkeley.)

(Now one might ask whether we should call the British idealists idealists. On the
view of Bernard Bosanquet, "[i]dealism is the spirit of the faith in real reality, and its way
of escape from facts as they seem is to go deeper and deeper into the heart of facts as they
are."(1) And, by 1914, Bosanquet--and others--considered abandoning the term, preferring
in its place, 'speculative philosophy.' [See Muirhead, Friends, and Bosanquet,
Distinction, p. __.])

Many of the idealists wrote about, or had an interest in religion and the
metaphysical--which is not surprising, since many were children of clergymen or initially
considered a religious vocation. Many of the idealists wrote about logic and psychology--which is not surprising since psychology and logic were not, at this point, regarded as
separate disciplines. Many were interested in, and wrote about, culture and the arts--which is not unusual, for reasons that I'll mention later, in Section II. And a primary
concern of many of the idealists was politics and political philosophy.

I want to begin with a few comments on political philosophy and especially the
issue of justice.

I. The Problem of Justice.

One of the most immediate concerns that people have is that they be treated justly--and
it's fair to say that this was as true over a century ago as it is today. Bernard Bosanquet
writes: "The appeal for "Justice" [...] goes straight to every human heart" (SII 195). "It
seems to be based on the fact that human nature lives in a multitude of individuals, who
have a common quality that demands that they should be treated by a common rule." (SII
195) Justice, then, has to do with rights (such as the right to be treated equally)--and with
the right.

Now there is an ambiguity in this--to speak about the relation of justice and right
(and rights) can mean first that the 'common rule' is one that must be applied
consistently--e.g., that injustice occurs when such a rule is followed in some cases and
not in others. But there is a second sense in which we might talk of the justice of the rule,
the question of the rightness or moral legitimacy of the rule itself--e.g., what justifies the
rule?

So we can ask, why should a person respect or obey this rule? What makes this
rule a just rule? And this is a question that requires some answer. We can call this the
problem of justice.

It is a classical problem.

Sometimes, appeal is made to the claim that it is in one's self-interest...

Sometimes, it is claimed that society as a whole, and most if not all of those in it,
are better off ...

But these solutions don't seem to go far enough. Because ....

The Idealists took the following approach. They agreed that there is some strength
in the claim that it is reasonable to obey rules when they are in the common good.
Certainly, if a rule wasn't in the common good, that would be one reason people
wouldn't follow it. But they recognised that someone might ask, What does a common
good have to do with my--i.e., the individual's--good? It's not enough to say that I'll be
better off in the long run if I respect this good, for who knows what the long run will
bring? (And I can be pretty sure that I probably won't be better off, in the sense that I
won't get all that I desire.) And in the meantime (in keeping with much of political
philosophy from at least the time of Hobbes), one might say that, if I don't consent to
such a good or rules and restrictions that lead to it, then I can't be bound by it.

Now, if the common or general good were something consented to by the
individual, law and justice would be justified / legitimated. So is there any sense in which
a person might be said to consent to or will the common good?

Some of the Idealists found an answer to this problem by appealing to a
'mechanism' found in explicitly in Rousseau (though also in Kant, and arguably implicit
in earlier thinkers [PTS on Hobbes and Locke])--that of the general will (or what the
Idealist Bosanquet came to call, the 'real will').

T.H. Green himself suggested the link between the common good and the general
will in his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, where he remarked that "the
truth" latent in Rousseau's doctrine of the general will is that "an interest in the common
good is the ground of political society."(2) So how can I be said to have an interest in the
common good? What is the general or 'real' will? Here is what Bosanquet says on the
matter:

In order to obtain a full statement of what we will, what we want at any moment
must at least be corrected and amended by what we want at all other moments; and
this cannot be done without also correcting and amending it so as to harmonise it
with what others want, which involves an application of the same process to them.
But when any considerable degree of such correction and amendment had been
gone through, our own will would return to us in a shape in which we should not
know it again, although every detail would be a necessary inference from the
whole of wishes and resolutions which we actually cherish. And if it were to be
supplemented and readjusted so as to stand not merely for the life which on the
whole we manage to live, but for a life ideally without contradiction, it would
appear to us quite remote from anything which we know. Such a process of
harmonising and readjusting a mass of data to bring them into a rational shape is
what is meant by criticism. And criticism, when applied to our actual will, shows
that it [i.e., our actual will] is not our real will; or, in the plainest language, that
what we really want is something more and other than at any given moment we are
aware that we will, although the wants which we are aware of lead up to it at every
point.(3) Pp 133-34.

So, Bosanquet says that a person can be said to have two wills: an 'actual' will and
a ';real' will. My actual will is what I want at some particular moment. (For example,
suppose it's Saturday night, I'm studying, and I think about turning on the TV and
watching hockey.) The 'real will' is what I want, brought into harmony with my other
wants (e.g., to finish studying, to pass the course), and with the maximum available
information, including what others want. It is common or universal, because others who
go through the same process end up with the same real will. And it is also something that
is my will--although I probably won't recognise it as such

.

Now, Bosanquet also says that a law or rule would be legitimate and just because
it is 'willed'--to be more precise, because it is the object of the general will.(4) So the
justice or legitimacy of a rule is rooted in the notion of the general will--that it is
something that, whether I am aware of it or not, I will.

This notion of the 'general' or 'real' will has, however, been the object of a good
deal of controversy.(5) Bosanquet speaks of this general `will' as being the `will' of society
and of the state. But, as Bosanquet himself asks in The Philosophical Theory of the State,
"How can [...] anything be my Will which I am not fully aware of, or which I am even
adverse to?" (PTS 110). And how can the state or society have a 'will' in any meaningful
sense of the term?

It is just these kinds of questions that critics of idealist political thought have
pressed. The sociologist Morris Ginsberg, for example, doubted that, in a social
institution or a state, there can be any such thing as a real or general will, as distinct from
a number of individual wills.(6) And many have doubted whether the notion of a "real will"
makes any sense at all.(7) It seems to confuse what person wills with what he or she ought
to will and, hence, should be called, not a real will, but an "ideal will"(8)

But even if there were such a thing as a will `greater than' one's `actual' will, in
what sense could it be "general"--that is, the same as the will of others? What has my
"real will" to do with the wills of others at all?(9) And again, if there is a general will, does
this not suppose that there must be a "corporate"(10) or "public"(11) self that has this will?
And even if we allow this, how does it follow that it justifies law or social institutions?(12)
Is it the will of the state or of society?(13) Finally, if the "general will" legitimates law,
wouldn't this give law an authority which it neither requires nor deserves?(14)

(So there have been a number of challenges to the idealist solution to the problem
of justice.)

Since the Idealist account of justice and obligation depends on a theory of the
general or real will, it is clear that these criticisms must be addressed in some way. The
Idealists would hold, of course, that many of these criticisms rest on a misunderstanding
of what is meant by the 'general' or 'real' will--and perhaps this is so. But there is
certainly some vagueness on what exactly the Idealists did mean by this, and some of the
idealists (e.g., Jones) seem to have been reluctant to depend very far on it.

(I think that there are plausible ways in which we might understand the term, but
this requires going into the Idealist critique of 19th century psychology and what their
alternative was. It also may involve an appeal to metaphysics and to features of idealist
logic... and this seems to get more and more removed from the here and now. And there
are, in any event, further challenges to idealist metaphysics and logic, and so the whole
discussion becomes quite complex. (I have attempted to deal with some of these issues in
my books.). But even if these responses are successful, it certainly destroys the elegance
and simplicity of the idealist account of justice and politics. [[So, even if their
conclusions are useful, then, .....

I want to suggest that there is another way of approaching the issue of the general
or real will, but indirectly, through aesthetics.

II Aesthetics and Aesthetic Consciousness

Several of the idealists wrote on aesthetics or, more specifically, on literature and art.
Why was there such an interest in art and aesthetics? There are, I think, three different
reasons here.

The first is a fairly prosaic reason. To be an educated person in 19th century
Britain--particularly to be a graduate of the major universities of Scotland and England--required having a basic knowledge of literature, including poetry, and of the other arts,
particularly painting and sculpture. One sees this in both academic and popular writing
(in a way that we don't see it today--though in a way that I am assured will be achieved
through the eXcel programme). The rise of the arts and crafts movement, through William
Morris, of the Home arts and Industry Association, and so on is some further evidence of
this. It was, then, virtually a given that one had or ought to have a moderately informed
opinion on the beautiful and beauty.

Second, and more specifically, much of the education in the humanities, and
particularly in philosophy, was through the medium of the Greek and Latin classics; in
fact, at Oxford in the 19th and through much of the 20th century, the basic curriculum for
philosophers was in literae humaniores--a study of the works, in the original languages,
of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Cicero, and so on. A philosophical education was also an
education in classical literature and its influences.

But a third reason was that the idealists were influenced by philosophers who had
a lot to say about the arts. In particular, they were influenced by the 'new' philosophies
of Kant and especially of Hegel--and, indirectly, by Hegel's account of the development
of spirit or mind (what he called Geist) through history. And a significant place in
Hegel's account is given over to the place of art and aesthetic consciousness.

There were several reasons, then, why one would have an interest in the arts, and
specifically in the beautiful. And a philosopher--particularly one impressed by the
contribution of Hegel--would reasonably be interested in the nature of art and aesthetic
appreciation, and in seeing how they had developed and what their place was. What is the
nature and function of art in the world? What is involved in the appreciation of the
beautiful? How did--and does--aesthetic experience occur?

These were questions that some of the British idealists sought to answer.

The best known figure in British idealist aesthetics was R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943). But the first to provide a thorough study of aesthetics--one who was described by
the literary scholar and Oxford Professor of Poetry, A.C. Bradley as "the only British
philosopher of the first rank who had dealt fully with this branch of philosophy [i.e.,
aesthetics]"--was Bernard Bosanquet.(15)

Bosanquet wrote a good deal on art and aesthetics from the mid 1880s, but his
most extensive treatment is to be found in A History of Aesthetic (1892), which traced
the evolution of aesthetic consciousness as it developed in Europe, providing an analysis
of some of the great theories of the beautiful beginning with those of the Greeks

How does Bosanquet see the nature and function of art?

3 features of art

1. art as expressive--an expression of the feeling of the artist, but an art object is
also an embodiment of the observer's feeling as well

2. art as having a content (and is representative) and so in that sense is descriptive.
What makes an artwork beautiful is its 'essential content'--which is the expression of the
.....

3. art is social--one way in which we can understand this is suggested by
Collingwood, in The Principles of Art--where a work of art may be a product of an
interaction with an audience. E.g., as in the performance of a piece of music or a play. Or
again, -- so far as both the artist's and the spectator's consciousnesses are dependent on
a social context / substratum

(And (thus) Bosanquet calls a work of art a concrete universal p. 8)

Bosanquet says is that in art, human spirit and freedom are present--specifically,
we see the role of the imagination

And because art is a product of consciousness, we can talk of a development of
that consciousness--that there can be a growth in width and penetration (A 463)--and also
progress in aesthetic consciousness can be made

What, then, is aesthetics? Aesthetics deals with understanding "the place and value
of beauty in the system of human life (A ix), and "aesthetic theory is the philosophical
analysis of this consciousness" of the beautiful (A 2)

And this leads in turn to the question of the importance -- of the nature and role --
of aesthetic consciousness.

By 'aesthetic consciousness' Bosanquet means the imaginative activity (A 3) of an
artist or an observer involving the contemplation of an expression of that imagination. By
imagination, Bosanquet doesn't mean the fanciful--what "luxuriates in detail without ever
piercing to the core" (451?) --but something that "seizes the heart of the matter and works
from within outward" (451?). The imagination, he writes in his Three Lectures on
Aesthetic (1915) "is precisely the mind at work, pursuing and exploring the possibilities
suggested by the connection of its experience" (TLA/BB 17).

This is an intellectual activity--but it is an activity of the body and mind as a
whole. It is not purely mental. It involves contemplation--but this is not some kind of
restful state but (as Aristotle would emphasize) an activity. It also has elements of
'revelation'--though again, not as something purely passive.

[[The fusion of spirit and body is the aesthetic experience, and is a principal type
of the unity of the world. Croce's Aesthetic 1920]]

Let me give you an idea of what Bosanquet understands by aesthetic
consciousness by citing from two texts--one early, one from the last year of his life:

In his one of his early essays, Bosanquet emphasises how art leads to an expansion
of the self--of the artist, in creating the work of art, but also of the spectator, in
appreciating the work. (And the term 'art' here applies as much to 'artistic handiwork' as
to 'fine art.') Aesthetic appreciation, he says, leads to a greater ability to appreciate not
only art but life. Thus Bosanquet writes:

"The perception of beauty implies, above all things, an awakened mind. [...]
[W]hen the sense of beauty is ever so little aroused, the mind has acquired a new
organ, a fresh contact, on the one hand, with nature, and, on the other hand,
through art, with human life." (Bosanquet 1888)

Aesthetic consciousness, then, is a way in which the observer comes to know the
world in a new way. And he expresses much the same view in perhaps the last complete
article that he wrote--an autobiographical piece, "Life and Philosophy." He writes,

Aesthetic experience "gives us a present world, a world which is even one with the
world we live in, but yet is twice-born, is at once its own truest self and the
profoundest revelation that itself can convey. [...] it takes us into a new world,
which is the old at its best. [...] In beauty we have the meeting-point of Nature and
Freedom, Kant has said in effect. In beauty man is free without ceasing to be
sensuous; [...] Here the whole apparatus of traditional dualism became in principle
once and forever obsolete. This world and the other, the a posteriori and the a
priori, the natural and the supernatural, with all their family, taken as signifying
antithetical realms of being and experience, were for the future idle tales." Life
and Philosophy, p.__

(I might note, parenthetically, so too did Hegel understand art as an aid in the
development of consciousness, and aesthetic consciousness as a preliminary step in the
development of full consciousness. The British Idealists generally follow Hegel
here.)

So art, then, provides an opportunity for a better understanding of the world--of
reality. But what is involved here is not just a quantitative understanding, but a
qualitative understanding. It is a knowledge of a different kind--though not opposed--to
discursive knowledge, and it is a knowledge of an object different from objects of simple
perceptual experience.

Take the following example from R.G. Collingwood:

[sunset?] artist and a scientist. The scientist sees colour distinctions--as being the
product of the connection of wavelength and hue, and this or that reflecting
surface...

But Bosanquet at least maintains that in the long term, aesthetic experience provides an
occasion for the recognition of insights concerning the unity of reality, and for an
experience of something greater than ourselves. This is characteristic of all art at all time.
Bosanquet's own work is filled with references to Goethe and to Wordsworth that
illustrate the 'elevating' character of art.

Thus, the British idealists saw art as carrying a person beyond the finite and
momentary interests of his or her self--as a bearer of more 'universal' truths than
particular statements about the world.

Aesthetic consciousness was an act of imagination--that 'seizing the heart of the
matter,' referred to above--which on occasion Bosanquet refers to as a kind of "creative
rapture" (TLA/BB 20)

For example, when a person considers the intricacy or complexity of a work of art--for example, the tensions in the feelings that are produced by it, or the 'width'--it may be
difficult to see the beauty in it. But it can still be something that is aesthetically excellent.

Aesthetic experience was characteristic of the higher experiences of life--unity,
order, truth, and value.

Aesthetic consciousness is also revelatory of the spiritual (e.g., non-material)
character of reality.

In short, art provided a means for consciousness to accede to an awareness of what
is real. Let me read you another quotation from Life and Philosophy -

"The highest praise, perhaps, is felt to be conveyed by it in any and every topic of
experience, when it judges of anything it cares for--a game, a speech, a policy, a
play or a fight, a poem or a piece of music, a great religion or a great
character--that in it you have "the real thing."

I suppose that, in its everyday use, this expression has two grades of meaning.
The expert in a game or sport means by it, I imagine, that the thing is being done
as that particular thing ought to be done--it belongs to the best of its kind. The
more romantic critic may use it of love, or religion, or poetry, and then he will be
beginning to mean not merely that it belongs to the best of its kind, but that it is
the best thing in life. [...] It is what holds water, what is strong, what has stability,
what is durable and permanent, what is alive and comes of itself, the whole object
which calls out the whole mind, in a word, what satisfies. This is the logical
character present in all the great experiences, in aesthetic and religious experience
no less than in that which is explicitly logical and metaphysic"

My consciousness of this-- "the real thing"--is not a denial of those things of
which I am normally aware in my experience, in perception, and so on. Nor is it involve
leaving behind or denying the social root and character of art and aesthetic expression. It
is, we could say, a recognition that one can have higher and deeper experiences of which
he or she is normally unaware, and which I come to see as 'true' or 'real' or 'valuable',
and therefore as something whose reality and value I should recognise. But this is
something that is true, real, and valuable, even if I don't recognise it.

III. Aesthetics and Justice

I introduced the idealist discussion of art and aesthetic consciousness in order to address
something in the idealist account of justice. How does this account of aesthetics and
aesthetic consciousness help?

What I want to suggest is that, if we accept this view of aesthetic consciousness,
we have a model of the real or general will, and we also have a model of the relation of
the general will to one's particular will.

1. Clearly, aesthetic experience is something individual

- it is in the artist and in the spectator or critic

- it is rooted in the particular--this observer, this object, etc.

- "The man, as he is when his nature is one with itself [...] is the needed
middle term between content and expression." (A 457)

2. But it is also something more than individual.

1. Art is something social (and therefore the experience is rooted in
something social) It is rooted in a social context, and it draws on that
(Think of how an audience is relevance both to the performance of a play,
and also to the enjoyment of the performance.)

2. But think of the role of "imagination" in art

It brings us outside--beyond 'sense' perception -- rapture

And it is in this contemplative, yet creative, state that we are aware of
things through art that we are aware of only in rare moments (e.g., unity or
wholeness)

Of course, this experience isn't identical in 2 different people, but we can speak of
it as an experience that more than one person can have, and that more than one person
can share in..

I.e., I can have this experience and you can have the same--not numerically the
same, but substantially the same--experience. We both can see the same thing in great art
(e.g., we can see--or come to see--the mystery in the Mona Lisa's smile).

The experience is 'objective' (or, at least, intersubjective)

3. It is an experience that is individual and universal at the same time, and in
which we see the relation of the individual and the universal.

What I want to suggest here is that has this gives us a way of addressing some
of the worries about the counterintuitive or too abstract or too metaphysical
character of the idealist solution to 'the problem of justice.' In other words, I would
propose that we can look at the general will in the way in which we think of an aesthetic
experience--where we have an example of the consciousness of an objective universal in
a particular consciousness.

Thus, the general will is rooted in an individual and in a concrete and specific
social context, yet it involves the awareness of a truth or truths that I may have only in
my more reflective moments. Although present in consciousness, it also has a content,
and is objective. It is something that, when I see it, I recognise it as real, and as binding.
But it is not a will that is no one's will, in the same way in which the highest aesthetic
experiences are not no one's experience.

And so I also want to say that through the illustration of aesthetic consciousness,
we can see how a general will can be related to a particular will--in the same way in
which I can think of an aesthetic experience (or a religious experience) in relation to the
character and object of my ordinary perceptual experience).

Certainly the bearing of aesthetic consciousness on politics was something that the
idealists seem to have considered or at least hinted at, though not in any detail. In the last
essay of Bosanquet on "Life and Philosophy" he writes

A new experience which reinforced and further interpreted the sense of
sociopolitical unity, and the vision of cosmic unity as postulated by science and
goodness, was, as I said, the aesthetic experience.

Conclusion

So what I have argued here is that the Idealist account of the basis of justice--and of the
legitimacy of law--depends on a notion that, at first look, may appear too metaphysical
and abstract--i.e., that of the general or 'real' will. (Thus the idealist solution to the
problem of justice is less problematic.)

But this notion can be brought closer to home if we see it as analogous to aesthetic
experience

This is not a strategy explicitly adopted by the idealists to explain the general will
and its relation to the particular will

Nevertheless, 1. it is consistent with it--and interestingly it does develop a
connection that some of the idealists hint at in their work. (And we can read some of the
texts of the idealists as a history of the development of consciousness of the individual as
citizen)

2. It shows us an interesting way of relating aesthetics and justice

3. And it fits with the holistic approach (including a metaphysical approach) of the
idealists.

4. Bosanquet's discussion of the general will appears primarily in the following books and articles:
"The Reality of the General Will," (henceforth abbreviated as RGW) International Journal of
Ethics, IV (1893-1894), pp. 308-321; The Philosophical Theory of the State, chapters VII and
IX; "Les idées politiques de Rousseau," (IPR) Revue de métaphysique et de morale, XX (1912),
pp. 321-340; and "The Notion of the General Will," (NGW) Mind, n.s. XXIX (1920), pp. 77-81.

15. [See Helen Bosanquet (1924), p. 61. See also the letter from A.C. Bradley to Helen
Bosanquet, dated February 10, 1923, in the Bosanquet papers, University of Newcastle Upon
Tyne Library, Trunk I, A (11).]